Christmas Cookie Recipes #TuesdayTip

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas all over so it’s time to think about some holiday baking! My fried Kathy makes the most delicious walnut crescent cookies every Christmas and we look forward to them every year. My other friend Jayne, a regular at our holiday table, also brings tasty cookie treats for our Christmas Eve dessert. So today I’m sharing some links to Christmas cookies you might like to try for the holidays! Just paste and copy the links into your browser!**

Hershey’s Christmas Cookie Pizza: http://bit.ly/2P5rmSS
Betty Crocker Recipes & 24 days of Cookies e-mail: http://bit.ly/2OZNRbX
Good Housekeeping 100 Top Christmas Cookie Recipes: http://bit.ly/2P3g2qn
Country Living 60+ Recipes: http://bit.ly/2P4rZME
Walnut Crescent Cookies: http://bit.ly/2P2WEK8

**Why no active links? Well, Google is punishing sites with broken links and with third party sites changing up content, it’s really hard not to have broken live links. Since I’ve been dinged by Google (and with over 6000 links it’s no wonder), I’ve got a link checker working on cleaning things up, but thought I’d avoid the issue by not having hyperlinks in the posts.

#FunFriday – Annual Christmas Outing

Every year we do our annual Christmas outing to get our tree, a new ornament, and then head into New York City to see all the windows, visit favorite places, and check out the Nutcracker ballet. It’s always a fun day! Here is a video I put together from this year’s outing.

Also, you can now read the first three chapters of ONE SUMMER NIGHT for free at Radish Fiction! Check out it by clicking here or following this link: http://bit.ly/2AERQFk

#ThrowbackThursday Christmas Village 2010 and this year’s village!

Wow, counting down to Christmas Eve. Lights are up. Tree is up. Gifts are being wrapped and the Christmas Village is up. I changed it up a little this year from year’s past so today’s Throwback Thursday is a look at the 2010 village as well as photos from this year’s village!

You can click here to see the 2010 Christmas Village video if you can’t see it below.

Here are photos from this year’s village!

Christmas Cookie Countdown & How to make them healthier #TuesdayTip #HealthyLiving #Recipe

I’m not really a baker, but I love cookies and cakes! Especially cookies. This time of year is both glorious and difficult since I’m sticking to my goal of eating healthier, but those Christmas cookies and treats are so so tempting.

Today’s tip is simple: A link to the awesome Betty Crocker Christmas Cookie Countdown. If you can’t find a cookie that you’ll like on there . . . Well, I don’t know what to say to that.

As for me, I’ll try a couple of these when I have more time and I think I’ll try making some of them healthier with some substitutions. For example, you can substitute a can of diet soda or seltzer in brownie and cake mixes instead of the oil and eggs. Applesauce and mashed bananas can be used as well in lieu of the oil for some cakes, brownies and cookies. You can click here for The Ultimate Guide to Healthier Baking infographic which has a number of other substitutions you can make for healthier eating.

Coconut Oil has also become one of those things to have handy and use as a substitute for butter. Click here for the 10 Best Sugar Cookie Recipes Using Coconut Oil!
Cookiecountdown

Happy Boxing Day!

Boxing Day is not something we normally celebrate in the U.S., but a number of people have off today since Christmas fell on a Thursday. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. We had a wonderful time and I did manage to get all the presents wrapped, finishing the food shopping, prepare the meal and more importantly, celebrate the holiday with family and friends.

I’ve got some photos for you from the holiday table, tree, Christmas village and our new little kitten. If you can’t see the post below, click here to visit the photo album.